1.0 Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a localizing a Graphical User Interface (GUI), and more particularly, to localizing a Java GUI application without modifying and rebuilding the source code.
2.0 Description of the Related Art
A Java® GUI application uses graphical components as the GUI to interact with a user. Java GUI components comprise button, menu, text field, check box, drop-down list and other commonly used visual controls. The “Abstract Window Toolkit” (AWT) and Swing are two commonly used Java GUI frameworks which include the above GUI components and enable the developer to write applications by placing the GUI components on a window panel.
Many Java GUI applications only support English as the language of the user interface. Those applications are difficult to use for customers in non-English countries or regions, and for those customers who want to read the text on the window in their own native language rather than English. One possible solution, referred to as a legacy localization process, is to re-write the Java GUI application, extract all language related strings to a separate localization pack, translate the localization pack, and then display the translated text on the user interface window using such processes as rebuilding and re-compiling. The legacy localization process works but is expensive because the Java source code of the Java GUI application is modified and the entire application is recompiled. In addition, for some legacy Java GUI applications, localization is not taken into account when the Java GUI applications are developed, and the source code may not even be available therefore making it impossible to perform the legacy localization process. Therefore, there is a need for a technique to localize a Java GUI application without modifying the source code.